Elon Musk Puts a Cap on Ticket Price to Mars Colony. Here’s How Much It Could Cost.

In Brief

Elon Musk's talk at the International Astronautical Congress has been adapted as a journal article in this month's New Space. The CEO of SpaceX focuses on the affordability of tickets to Mars as a key factor in its successful colonization.

Mars Planning

Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, delivered an address at the International Astronautical Congress held in Guadalajara, Mexico last year outlining his vision of getting humans into space. This talk has now been adapted into a fifteen-page article that was published in this month’s issue of the journal New Space. Musk focuses on affordability as a major factor to ensuring the possibility of Mars colonization. He says “You cannot create a self-sustaining civilization if the ticket price is $10 billion per person.” He believes that the cost should be about $200,000; equivalent to the median price of a house in the United States.

Musk outlines the steps he considers essential to ensuring this relative affordability. The first step, developing fully reusable transport, is already well underway at SpaceX. The company has already proven the reliability of its reusable rockets, and have recently demonstrated the reusability of the Dragon spacecraft. Fueling is also a key factor in controlling costs: equipping any craft with additional fuel will significantly increase the weight of the craft. Musk proposes using methane — which is produced on Mars and would therefore allow for refueling via sources directly on the plant.

Going Multi-Planetary

Many experts believe that in order to ensure the survival of our species, we must work to be multi-planetary beings. Perhaps Musk’s vision to get us to Mars is the first step toward that goal. Musk’s enthusiasm for his Mars project is quite timely if we are to believe Stephen Hawking, who predicts humanity only has 100 years left on Earth.

We are at the beginning of an exciting crossroads for humanity. The space race of the mid-20th century brought about great change for humanity. It’s looking like this iteration will completely transform us.